Fatherless Bonus Material By Chapter
Chapter 1 - The Early Years
Chapter 2 - Boarding School
“The dormitory - my new home - was a long, echoing room. It was military in its layout. Cubicles lined both sides of the room, each containing a narrow bed and a small bedside table. Thirty cells, each indistinguishable from the rest. There was stillness in the place, as if the furniture held secrets.”
Chapter 3 - Upton Grey
“At fifteen, I moved into the 17th century manor Lodge. I spent my first summer there lost in overgrown gardens and secrets. Between the ghosts of the past and the words in the books I read, I found a quiet refuge for my imagination.”
“The cottage stood pressed against the road at the top of the hill in the village of Upton grey, a village so old its name had made it into the Doomsday Book, England’s first record of land and lineage.
“The lodge itself, built in the 1600s, was all stone and beams. It was the gatekeeper to the Grand Manor, tucked way back behind a stretch of ancient Roman road. There was a melancholy grandeur in its decay - the kind that made you expect ruins, or ghosts. It was almost hidden by a tangle of feral gardens.”
Chapter 4 - Felix
Chapter 5 - Felix Honeymoon
“Venice wrapped itself around us like a spell. It didn’t feel real. But it was. And for a little while, it was magic.”
THE HOTEL DANIELI, VENICE - the last stop on my honeymoon tour with Felix - “If there is a heaven, this would surely be it - not for its grandeur, but for the way it made you feel both exalted and very, very small.”
Chapter 6 - Hong Kong
MOVING TO HONG KONG WITH FELIX AFTER OUR WEDDING
“The harbour was scattered with wooden junks, their red sails bowling like lanterns against the water.”
“As the plane descended, it dipped low over Kowloon City, threading its way through tall buildings.”
Chapter 7 - Japan
Chapter 8 - Burma
BURMA - travels with Felix
“...During our first year abroad, we visited Burma - still Burma then. We arrived in Rangoon to skylines dotted with gilded pagodas.”
“We chose Mandalay, the city in the north that had once been home to Burmese Kings.”
Chapter 9 - Africa
Chapter 10 - Los Angeles
Chapter 11 - Gavin - Early Years
ON FIRST MEETING GAVIN
“But there was something about being watched like that. Not with hunger, not even with admiration - just quiet, unrelenting attention, like you’ve become the only thing in the room worth studying.”
“And just like that, the chemistry was locked in, like it had been waiting for the moment we stopped pretending not to notice.”
Chapter 12 - Lola
“There I was, holding my brand new baby, feeling the hollow place where my father should have been. Still, even with all that, there was no denying what had just happened. I had carried and delivered a person into the world. And for the first time. I felt like I had done something that really mattered.”
Chapter 13 - The New House Post Separation
ON MOVING INTO THE NEW HOUSE AFTER SEPARATION
“I walked through slowly, dragging my fingers along the raw surfaces, needing to feel something solid. The grit clung to my skin. The smell of sweat and drywall hung heavy in the summer heat, but none of it stirred me. I was moving through it like someone submerged - slow, detached, breath held.”
“Inside, the house was mid-renovation. The air was thick with the smell of plaster dust and old insulation. The walls had been opened up, their inner wires hanging like guts from a wound.”
“Since the separation, relief came in increments, like water seeping through stone. It did not rush in or wash anything clean. It gathered slowly, filling the narrow spaces between betrayal and sorrow.”
Chapter 14 - Gusto
“Not just a dog. Is there any such a thing? Although just a dog is already more than enough - already everything.”
“He walked into my life without hesitation, as if he’d always meant to find me. And I - though I didn’t know it yet - was already relying on him. He saved me, in ways only animals can - without condition. Without expectation, without needing to be asked.”
Chapter 15 - Gavin - Divorce & Trial
BETRAYAL AND DIVORCE - “He stabbed me slowly, with silence and spin. In trying to protect himself, he dismantled me bit by bit, word by word. He eroded my trust, not just in him, but in myself.”
TRIAL - “When I heard him deny all the letters, the promises, the private truths we’d once had between us, it knocked the air from my lungs. There was something so casual in his betrayal, so rehearsed, that left me disoriented. Not just hurt. Undone. This was not just infidelity. It was annihilation.”
“I had stood my ground. I had not become the woman they tried to invent. That in itself was a kind of verdict - not one spoken from the bench, but from somewhere deeper and quieter within me.”
Chapter 16 - Oma / Holland
“She was living in Amersfoort then, a medieval town in the eastern part of the country. I hadn’t seen her in a long time, and I’d rarely spent time alone with her. But I felt an urge - the kind that sneaks up on you when you realize time doesn’t stretch out forever. I wanted to know her better, or at least try.
I booked a room in a small hotel on the old town square, called the Hof. The square was surrounded by buildings that looked exactly like you’d expect in Holland - tall and narrow with gambrel roofs and curved eaves, the kind of buildings that lean in towards each other like they are sharing a secret. Each one had a pulley mounted near the top window, used to hoist furniture and other awkward things up through the air because the stairways were too narrow.”
Chapter 17 - Gwen - My Grandmother’s House
“When I think of my English grandmother, I’m instantly filled with a deep, settled warmth - the kind that doesn’t rush in all at once, but spreads slowly. It lived in the small, ordinary moments: in the way nothing about her felt urgent or performed. Her affection didn’t seek attention. It didn’t ask anything of me. It simply existed. Being with her felt like standing on solid ground.”
Chapter 18 - New Mexico
“I wasn’t meant to be seduced by beauty. I wasn’t meant to be comforted or charmed by the colors of sunsets. I wasn’t meant to be distracted. I wasn’t meant to be saved. I was meant to be undone.”
“This land was not interested in holding me. This land was bare. It offered no sanctuary: wild in places, uninhabitable in others, unapologetic and open. There was nowhere to hide. It offered nothing but honesty. No softness, no shade. Wide open, exposed, belly up, all of its scars visible. And it demanded the same of me.”
KIM - “It’s going to be good,” Kim said, her hand resting lightly on my arm. “The worst is behind you.”
CÉCILE - “You made it! I can’t believe you’re here!” She was euphoric as she swept me into the folds of her light blue dress, which matched her eyes. She smelled like roses distilled into a note that only perfumers understand - or the French, which she is.”
Chapter 19 - Benny - My Sidekick
Chapter 20 - Artifacts About My Father
Chapter 21 - Poems
